


Everything We've Worked For

by Sally_Port



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 21:47:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sally_Port/pseuds/Sally_Port
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A group of grad students living off grant money in 2001 accidentally open a portal to the future and Julia Neville has a chance at a life of privilege, wealth, position, respect, power and influence by preventing the Blackout.</p><p>But the sacrifice would be loosing Tom and Jason</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything We've Worked For

0840

She never understood the science behind it but Julia Neville admitted she didn't really care. She had been walking through a back street of Washington D.C. when the glow made up of colors she had no name for caught her attention. It wasn't part of the brick wall next to her but it was against it and she knew better than to touch what she didn't understand. But the part of her that was never able to leave things alone made her reach out with her left hand - the one with the large diamond she wanted so much to get rid of - just to see if she could touch the brick. There was nothing there.

She had thirty minutes to make it back to the elegant townhouse she shared with Victor Doyle before he came home for breakfast from his early meeting -- a ready explanation of wanting to see to the morning markets herself; backed up by two bags of fresh baked scones, imported coffee beans and eggplant -- all while she could still feel the wonderful ache of Tom's body on hers.

But she hadn't risen where she had by not making the dangerous choices and the chance this had something to do with the sort of science that had plunged the world without electricity was too much not to exploit. If there was no wall there, then something had to be on the other side of it and by-damn, she would find a way to exploit it.

There was no sensation stepping through but she found herself in a room that would have had white walls if there hadn't been hundreds of computer monitors jamming every available space and most of the center of the room. She was standing in a confluence of six poles radiating the same light into a dome high above her head.

There were people in the room, five of them, and they all stared at her in shock and horror. She heard curses, screams and a few sibanlent hisses as she stepped clear of the platform. Everyone had turned to look at a bearded man who had risen from a computer monitor. He had a sort of rakish handsomeness, if one didn't mind their man being scruffy and wearing clothes that looked like they had just rolled out of bed.

But, Julia reasoned, since everyone was looking between her and him, he was most likely the in charge.

As she cleared the edge of the platform, the light broke around her and someone else groaned.

"Um," the bearded man said, holding out his hands like a gesture of peace. "We mean you no harm."

That was up for debate, but Julia kept her mouth shut as her gaze darted around the room. She'd never seen anything like the device, other than in bad science fiction movies Tom had been strangely addicted to and she'd watched just to snuggle against him, listening to the heart beat of her world as he had relaxed. He'd have watched something else if he had known she'd been bored by them, but she had lied, just to watch him enjoy himself. She'd learned to sometimes laugh, even when he hadn't, just so he wasn't constantly checking for her reaction.

"What is this?" she asked and the man glanced over at one of the computer.

"Evan, why did you turn it off?"

"I didn't," a skinny guy badly in need of a good meal and a haircut tapped a keyboard, fingers clicking a tattoo of frustration on mouse buttons and the almost-forgotten CTL-ALT-DEL combination. "It locked up when she stepped away. But I think I can re-establish it."

Beard, she dubbed him, came up to her and appeared to be looking at her with a kind of fascinated hunger that she was familiar with if only it didn't seem to be directed more at his machine than at her. "I'm so sorry, Ma'am. This must seem so very strange to you. But I promise, we can get this fixed and return you to your own proper place. I'm sorry you won't ever really be able to understand it, but maybe if you just think of it as some kind of a dream."

"Is there a door I could use instead?"

She noticed with satisfaction that while everyone still looked uncomfortable, they all appeared to be regarding her with a new respect.

"Well," Beard said after a long pause. "No. Because I know this seems difficult to believe. But we're your future."

Her first stunning sweep of relief that someday the power would really be restored lasted just moments, as her eyes darted around the rooms. Clunky monitors, CD Rom drives in majority but two computers had actual old floppy-drive ports.

"Where am I," she said, feeling the first hints of vertigo.

Beard's smile looked like it was meant to be kind. "Washington D.C. We're working with George Washington University -- that's a kind of college -- to try to explore the effects of radiation exposure on temporal capabilities." He looked faintly embarrassed. "We never actually thought it would work, until about an hour ago when that rift opened and we were able to see into your time. Surprised the hell out of us. Sorry." It took her a moment he was apologizing for his language. "This was just a chance to get a stipend and grant money." He wound down, looking like he wasn't expecting her to believe him. "It's the year 2001. We've been taking video of what we've seen -- it's like photographs that have people moving in them. Do you have photographs yet?"

2001 explained, she realized, the computers. And the cell phone someone had pulled out and was talking on in a low voice. She'd not actually had that model, but several of her co-workers had, and it had been legendary for its ability to drop calls, had a text limit of 50 characters and no camera. Her dress, she realized, also may have been a little misleading. She preferred knee length dresses usually with straps or capped sleeves, but it had been a chilly morning and she'd chosen a dress with an ankle length skirt and matching jacket.

She caught her breath, sudden and sharp. 2001 was over a decade before the blackout and the sudden urge to go murder the entire Matheson family -- and Bass Monroe for good measure -- was attractive but not practical since she was pretty sure the Matheson's had only been a few of many that had worked on the damn project that had ended the world. Jason, she realized, would not have even been born yet. In 2001, she wouldn't meet Tom for a year.

"Ma'am," Beard said, coming up to support her with his arm. "I realize how much of a shock to you this must be. I promise, we'll do everything we can to get you back home to your own time. This must be so strange for you."

It was, Julia thought. But not the same kind of shock he thought. "What's your name?"

"Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm Jack. Jack Wilson."

"Julia N. . .Doyle." She had no reason to believe he was lying, but best, she decided, to take no chances.

"Julia. Nice to meet you. Evan, any luck?"

Evan turned around, looking miserable. "No. We didn't anticipate anything actually going anywhere so I think we got an energy feedback that overheated everything. I think we just need to shut everything down and try again in an hour or two."

Two of the other men in the room nodded enthusiastically and the final one was still on his phone. They all had the generic post-graduate student appearance of men who were still trying to spin out their college education with additional degrees every time they had a shot at a real job. She had always hated the type and yet there was a kind of familiar nostalgia. Most of them had not done well in the days following the blackout.

"Julia, I'm so sorry. This might take a little longer than we first thought. A few hours. Can we get you anything. Water? Food?"

She was tempted to ask him for a really good glass of sake and an order of seared uni but she wasn't about to give up her advantage yet. "No. Not yet." Every story she'd read about time travel almost always had the afflicted mortal whisked back at the moment they had left or months or years different. Her first thought was hoping Tom wouldn't worry if she missed their planned rendezvous in two days. Only after did she wonder what sort of excuse could she provide to Victor if she was very late. She dismissed that one because she could easily spin a lie he'd believe but worrying Tom wasn't something she could just brush aside.

Jack was speaking to the man on the cell phone, his voice going sharp, "Pete, what the hell are you doing. Sorry" he added again, and she repressed the urge to smile if he thought her unused to men swearing. "If you're telling anyone about this, I swear, I'll break your neck along with your phone."

Pete looked whiter than when she had first walked off the platform. "Not a word, Jack. I swear. But I got a text from my sister in New York that a plane flew into a building near hers and I was making sure she was alright.

The walls wobbled, the monitors flashed and Julia would have sworn she felt an impact but when she looked up she was sitting down with her head between her  
knees. "Julia," Jack asked. "Are you alright?"

"What day is it?" she demanded and he looked at her like she was crazy.

"It's 2001." She could tell from his look he thought she was just starting to realize she had traveled in time.

Advantages be damned, she decided. "Is it September 11th?" He nodded, appearing to be confused. "What time is it?"

They stared at her like she was crazy and she snarled, "What time is it!" Grabbing at Jack's wrist.

The digital screen read 0859 and she turned towards Peter. "Call your sister back. If she works in the South Tower of the World Trade Center she has four minutes to get out before a plane crashes into it too. Both Towers are going to collapse."

If she had to re-live any day in her past, she wondered, why couldn't it have been her wedding day or the day Jason was born. She'd be a mere spectator to her younger self's life, but she could have watched with the satisfaction of knowing how she would always love her men, no matter how wrong her world went. To re-live this day again, to know what was happening but to probably be too late to do anything. If Peter's sister worked on an upper floor, she wouldn't be able to get out in time even now.

"How do you know about the World Trade Centers," Jack asked. "They weren't built til the seventies."

"Construction started in the sixties," she snapped. "Where does your sister work?"

It may not be enough to save her life but she wondered if she would give them a chance to say goodbye. It had been the hardest part when she thought her husband and son had both died.

"About a block away from the Towers," Peter told her.

They were all staring at her like she was crazy and she rubbed at her eyes, even though they were absolutely dry. "I'm not from your past. I'm from your future. Osama Bin Laden is behind the Taliban attacking the United States. They bomb the towers at 0846, 0903, the Pentagon at 0937 and the passengers take over the last plane meant for the White House and crash it into a field in Pennsylvania at 1003." She'd watched all the news broadcasts for days, falling asleep to sobbing families telling stories of the missing and dead because it seemed impolite to ignore their grief.  
They didn't look like they believed her. "Is there a television in here?"

One of the other men looked over at a corner and she saw a boxy TV on a stand with a DVD/VCR combo player with it. She'd missed it, she realized, because even after all the time after the blackout she had been looking for a flat-screen.

"Turn it on. See if I'm wrong. But keep the volume down. I don't want to watch it again."

1200

It had been too much, she realized, to hope she could do something to prevent what would happen. Her team of science geeks might have been in a laboratory full of computers but she looked around and realized they were all slightly outdated, even for 2001. Their power and influence was bound to end at the door they were strangely reluctant to open and she didn't press them.

All the modern conveniences in the world wouldn't make up for being away from Tom and the thought of finding him 20 years younger than her might have had its consolations but the theoretical loop -- if she were with Tom, who would her past self be with and then how would her past self be in D.C. after the blackout to come back -- was enough to make her head ache. Evan still thought the equipment would take a few more hours to cool and Bill and Steve -- the other two who's names she had learned as they'd all watched the planes smash -- were agreeing with him automatically. Jack just bit his lip, shook his head and looked at her like she was the solution to a problem he hadn't solved.

They had turned off the TV an hour or so before when Jack popped in a DVD of the recordings they'd taken from their portal on the wall. The side-street hadn't been well traveled but they'd had a high angle to see out into a main street and they all looked skeptical at her as the horses and wagons had rolled past. It wasn't until Julia had freeze-framed the picture on a converted car-trailer with a license plate still hanging off it and zoomed into expiration numbers "2015" showing up, even after the graininess of the image magnifications. 

She admitted to herself she was a little bitter that they didn't believe her until they saw the license plate,even after she took the DVD remote away from them showed them how to use the zoom function.

It wasn't until Bill shut the video off, hands shaking, that Jack turned back to her. "So, this thing that happens. Do you know how to prevent it?"

She didn't know the specifics, she realized. She knew it had something to do with Rachel and Ben Matheson and a war project that had gone wrong. Her polite suggestion they go back a few days to prevent 9/11 entirely was met with denials and assertions by Peter that the machine had been meant to go forward only and that they had assumed she was from the past just because of the things they had seen.

Trust men, she thought to herself, to come up with a way to save the world a day AFTER it needed saved. 

"Yes, I could stop it." It wasn't if it was true that second. It was how sure she sounded when she said it, and how much they looked like they believed her.

1900

She elected to stay the night in the lab, citing concerns over not wanting to risk running into anyone and they bought it. She paid particular attention to the way they all handled the equipment and talked her way into three of their log-ins, ostensibly so she could play solitaire if she got bored.

They sprang for sake and uni when she asked, and the flavors almost made her cry. She would, she promised, give them the information in the morning on how to stop the blackout in exchange for a trip back to her own time. Then she made Evan demonstrate just how she could get there, should something happen and they never come back. 

On normal days, she doubted they would have ever left the lab, but after 9/11 they were having that desperate compulsion to see family and she was reassuringly understanding about it.

She waited for two hours after they left before engaging the controls, adjusting the timing setting back to four years after the blackout. The scene that resolved in the viewer was amazing. It D.C. similar to what she remembered on her last trip -- two years before the blackout. The scene confirmed what she suspected -- that she did have enough information to stop it. And also the tenuous nature of the future. Her presence and resolve to stop the blackout was enough to change history.

She stepped through the portal, onto the street corner, and walked half a block to the nearest coffee shop and made eyes at the barista, asking to borrow his phone because her cell had died and she needed to call her sister. 

She didn't know for sure why she dialed her and Tom's old number but it rang and rang and no one ever picked up so she dialed her mother and her throat closed at  
the sound of the familiar voice she'd thought she'd never hear again.

"Julia? What are you doing calling from a D.C. I thought Martin was taking you to Italy for the week?"

Martin? Who the hell was Martin?

"Long story. Mom, what happened to Tom?" 

There was silence for a long time and her mother's voice was full of censure. "Julia, why mention him. You've been divorced for three years. I thought you were moving on finally."

Her heart closed and she took a deep breath. "Mom, can you humor me? I know you don't understand, but tell me what happened between us."

"Well, I for one never thought he was good enough for you. And not because he was black." She'd forgotten how much her mother had always brought up that her dislike of Tom had nothing to do with the color of his skin. Julia had always thought it was protesting too much. "But after he lost his job and you both got evicted from the house, you finally came to your senses and left came home. You and Jason." 

She heard the tears in her mother's voice and she felt frozen, like the day she'd thought they had both died. "Then when Tom and Jason got hit by that drunk driver. Tom should have been the one to die that day, instead of Jason. But, Baby, why bring this up. You're going so well. Your dad and I just love Martin. 

"I love Martin too," she replied automatically, knowing what was expected, even if her throat felt dry.

"I mean, not just because his family has money, which doesn't hurt. Don't tell me you're nervous about the election next year. I know it's got to be sort of a second-fiddle to only be the Vice President's wife. But everyone knows he'll run after Gregory's term is up. And then you'll be the wife of the President."

"Hey Mom, I need to go. I just wanted to say I love you."

She heard the surprise in her mother's silence. They hadn't spoken much after Julia had chosen to marry Tom and she was even shocked to know she meant it, even if part of her was glad they hadn't spoken since the blackout and probably never would speak again.

The portal was where she left it and the machine showed no sign of shutting down when she walked back onto the platform. She wondered if the feedback Evan had mentioned had anything to do with the nanites from a jump to a post-blackout world.

She left it running while she detatched one of the desk laptops and went back to the coffee shop. It took some work to get the older sytem to accept the wi-fi, but eventually she got logged on the internet and pulled up a search engine. She found the article on President Kenneth Gregory and how his vice president wasn't re-running with him due to extreme health issues and how lawyer and philanthropist Martin Waite-Paulson was going to be his next running mate. The pictures were slow to load but she was standing next to a stunningly handsome dark haired man gazing at her with a content smile.

She spent the next hour reading. His politics were moderate democrat, but with strong ties to both democrats and republican parties. His mother had money from a textile empire and their three homes were featured in magazines and there were interviews with her as well. She read quotes about how happy she was, how much they loved each other and how the death of her only child at age twelve had been an unbearable tragedy and she could never replace him but she was looking foward to having another family in a few years.

The picture of them at a cancer benefit was particularly moving. Her jewelry along must have run into the millions but it was her face as she watched him dancing with a bald twelve-year-old girl suffering from leukemia. This man, she realized, was a good person. And the woman staring back at her from the internet page truly did have the life she had always wanted. Power, wealth, position, respect.

She felt her eyes tear up and for a moment she was glad she could feel regret as she shut down the computer and headed back to the lab. But her choice was easy. Do whatever it takes. Everything we have always wanted.

The next adjustment of the machine showed her the street that looked remarkably similar to what she had left, only the light different. When she stepped through it, she felt something shiver in her heart but she ran to Tom's rooms and he and Jason met her at the door, both of them clutching at her like she was their lifeline -- instead of them being hers.

"Mom," Jason finally managed to say. "They're looking everywhere for you. No one has seen you for nearly 24 hours. We --"

"I need a grenade," she said and both Jason and Tom looked at her like she was crazy. "It's a long story and someday I'll explain. But I need a grenade. Or maybe two. Please, Tom, I need you to do this for me."

The look they exchanged was the one that always made her realize this was the man she would be with forever, no matter who she had to use to survive. She reached out to touch Jason's cheek again. It had broken her heart when Jason and Tom had been fighting so much -- as if the living symbol of their union had been the thing that had caused Tom the most pain.

She wasn't surprised when Tom managed to produce a grenade and some other explosives and she made him wait there while she went back to the lab and placed the gunpowder and dynamite around the room. She went back through the wall, lobbed in the grenade and ran. There was no sound but she felt the shock wave throw her down in the street and she got up before anyone could ask questions. Tom and Jason were waiting for her and she flashed them a smile before heading towards the home she didn't like with the husband she didn't love. She knew she'd have a convincing story by the time she got there and what really mattered was her real life was safe.

**Author's Note:**

> This probably needs some serious revision. I had the idea while cooking dinner tonight and its a lot more narration; lot less dialog and description than it should be. But it's a first draft and I wanted to get it out before I lost the feel of it.
> 
> I know its a stretch to imagine Julia could change the future by just changing her intent. . .but I'm theorizing time travel so please, work with me here. I wanted her to actually get a look at her future. If I ever do a longer version, I may even have her go through and spend a little time with her new husband and see at least one of their three houses, and her jewelry in person rather than just on a computer.
> 
> I know it's also a little bit of a stretch for her to be able to operate all the equipment alone, but I imagine she'd be pretty tech savy. If I ever do a re-write, maybe I'd make her a software developer or something before she married Tom.
> 
> As always, comments are welcome. And if someone wants to make some major suggestions (after all, this is a first draft and could probably use some) I set up an email of sallyportao3@gmail.com if you don't feel comfortable critiquing in a posting.


End file.
